John Newton and God’s Amazing Grace
The song Amazing Grace is well known throughout the world. John Newton is probably best known because of his authorship of this time honored hymn. However, not as many know the story of his life and his beginnings as a vile sailor and slave trader. His life’s journey is a testimony to this Amazing Grace as he labors to become a pastor, hymn writer and slavery abolitionist.
John was born in the year 1725. His father was a sea captain who was brought up by Jesuits in Spain. His mother was a devout in her faith but sadly died when John was but seven years old. In his late teen years and early twenties he was a foulmouthed, fornicating, militant atheist. He had abandoned the straight course of his Christian upbringing. Next he became a deserter from the royal Navy where he was serving as a midshipman. However, he was apprehended, flogged, and then reduced in rank to an ordinary seaman. His next tour of duty was aboard a slave ship working the trade off the western coast of Africa. He, like the other seafaring slave-traders, took pleasure in satisfying their sexual lusts by raping the defenseless slave girls who were chained in the ships hold. After nearly being lost at sea in a terrible storm John fell to his knees and prayed for forgiveness. He counted this 10th day of May in the year 1748 as the day of his “great deliverance.”
Much to his great shame, John continued in the life as a slave-trader bringing these captives to America where they would suffer untold misery at the hands of plantation owners. The life aboard ship without any Christian fellowship found him returning to his old sinful ways. Then he was struck down with an illness and found himself at death’s door. This caused him to again to seek God’s mercy and forgiveness. He soon recovered but the experience had changed him so that he was able to stay on the straight and narrow path.
He married his life-long sweetheart, Mary Catlett, and exchanged his sea-bag for a surveyor’s transit and worked this new trade at Liverpool. It was here that he became acquainted with the teaching of the evangelistic preacher, George Whitfield. He got to know Methodist John Wesley. After teaching himself Latin, Greek, and Hebrew he decided to go into the ministry. However, at his first attempt he was turned away but he persisted and was finally ordained in 1764. His first pulpit was in the town of Olney which lies in the county of Buckinghamshire. It was during this time that he met the poet William Cowper. Together they authored the works known as the “Olney Hymns.” The Olney Hymns were comprised of 68 pieces by Cowper and 280 by Newton.
In 1779 Newton left Olney and became rector of St Mary’s in London. By this time he had become appalled by the slave trade and was heartbroken that he had continued in such an egregious life for so long while a believer. In the mid 1780s Newton began to influence a young Christian and Member of Parliament named William Wilberforce. Newton thus became one of the many evangelicals who encouraged Wilberforce to take up the cause for the abolition of slavery. John was able to provide an inside look at this most despicable trade.
The battle against slavery continued for twenty-one years. By the time Wilberforce triumphed in the year 1807, John Newton had lost his sight and was dying. However, he was able to live long enough to see the slave trade abolished on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He died on December 21st, 1807 at the age of 83 having served in ministry for forty-four years knowing that God’s Amazing Grace would at last lead him safely home.
2007 marks the bicentennial of Parliament’s passage of the bill that abolished the slave trade. The Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill became law on March 25th, 1807. William Wilberforce (1759-1833) as a member of a group of Anglican evangelicals based around the Clapham Church in London, campaigned against the slave trade. The 1807 Act, however, did not stop the British slave trade because the sea captains scoffed at the law and took their chances with the heavy fines. In 1833, a month after William Wilberforce’s death, Parliament finally passed the Slavery Abolition Act giving all slaves in the British Empire their freedom.
__________________
IRS HELP
settle credit card debt
PP 
( 